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Macs and DVD Regions

headn00bheadn00b Registered User regular
edited February 2007 in Help / Advice Forum
So I am in the UK and have a Mac Mini. It is lovely, but my girlfriend recently bought me some MST3K DVDs from Canada and my Mac can't play them. Is there any legal way to unlock the drive? I am willing to pay a small fee for any kind of software that can do this.

Your sig was too tall.

-Thinatos
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Posts

  • EggyToastEggyToast Jersey CityRegistered User regular
    edited February 2007
    What about hardware? this is kind of fancy but would do the job swimmingly, as well as netting you an extra DVD drive dedicated to region 1.

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  • headn00bheadn00b Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    EggyToast wrote:
    What about hardware? this is kind of fancy but would do the job swimmingly, as well as netting you an extra DVD drive dedicated to region 1.

    That's a little more than I'd be willing to spend right now, plus I'd rather not clutter up my desk any more.

    headn00b on
    Your sig was too tall.

    -Thinatos
  • vonPoonBurGervonPoonBurGer Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    The only way to play media from different regions, without changing the region code of the drive (which you can only do a fixed number of times, like 5), is to flash it with region-free firmware. I don't think any such firmware exists for the drive in the Mac Mini. I did read one report of a guy managing to play Region 2 DVDs in his Region 1 Mac Mini using VLC, but I don't know if he was mistaken or what. The consensus in the thread was that it was a hardware/firmware issue, and something no player app could resolve, but I suppose it's worth a try.

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  • SenjutsuSenjutsu thot enthusiast Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    vonPoonBurGer wrote:
    The only way to play media from different regions, without changing the region code of the drive (which you can only do a fixed number of times, like 5), is to flash it with region-free firmware. I don't think any such firmware exists for the drive in the Mac Mini. I did read one report of a guy managing to play Region 2 DVDs in his Region 1 Mac Mini using VLC, but I don't know if he was mistaken or what. The consensus in the thread was that it was a hardware/firmware issue, and something no player app could resolve, but I suppose it's worth a try.
    On older drives VLC would just ignore the region settings and read it anyways. On newer drives the drive will physically refuse to read a disc from the wrong region.

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